Braingineering Technologies is an innovative biotech company that provides pharmaceutical companies with drug screening services in drug discovery and pre-clinical testing for Parkinson’s disease. Braingineering Technologies offers a new high-tech in vitro Brain-on-a-Chip technology and brain organoid technology that increases efficiency and relevance in the drug development process. Both technologies are based on the utilization of disease specific human induced pluripotent stem cells. Furthermore, we make use of microfluidics devices to reduce costs and increase automation and parallelization. The benefits are that this 3D brain technologies mimic human CNS diseases more adequately, it enables medium throughput screening, it reduces animal testing and it ensues low costs for the customer due to less media. Brain-on-a-Chip technology Mini-Brain Organoids 9, Avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux; 4362 Esch-sur-Alzette; Luxembourg Prof. Dr. Jens C. Schwamborn Homepage: www.braingineering.lu Email: [email protected] 1 2 3 Samples from unique existing large library based on iPSC technology Culture of stem cells in a 3D environment and in dynamic conditions Highlight and identify defective cells Written report with results Microfluidics plates Population of cells (neurons, astrocytes) Brain-on-a-Chip ≈ human brain In vitro drug screening Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with Parkinson’s disease specific mutations are cultivated in 3D bioreactors under microfluidics conditions. After seeding their differentiation into brain like structures is induced. With Parkinson’s disease specific cells we obtain phenotypes that are stronger than phenotypes in classical 2D cultures. Because of these strong phenotypes and the multi-well approach this is an ideal set-up for drug testing. Human induced pluripotent stem cell derived neuroepithelial stem cells (hNESCs) are cultured under dynamic, free-floating 3D conditions. Upon exposure to a specific cocktail of differentiation inducting signals they differentiate into human mini-brains that are specific for the midbrain. We obtain robust neuronal, astrocyte and oligodendrocyte differentiation. The mini-brains reach a size of several millimetres. The obtain neurons, in particular dopaminergic neurons, carry functional synapses and show electrophysiological activity. Additionally, we can demonstrate the production of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. These mini-brains are a prefect tool for advanced drug screening and toxicology testing. Midbrain organoid Midbrain identity Myelination Synapses Neuromelanin Electrohysiology Based on Lancaster et al., 2013 Monzel et al., 2016